I explore Linux by installing and configuring it from scratch (i.e. no gui, bare terminal). I installed only xorg, i3, gnome-terminal and few other utilities. Besides, I've installed open-vm-tools to enable VMware host-guest copy/paste feature. Unfortunately, it did not work. Then I installed gnome and it suddenly started to work! What magic does gnome and other DEs use to enable host-guest copy/paste? I want that feature without installing whole desktop environment.
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2 Answers
If you're using a Debian-related distribution, installing Gnome probably brought in the libraries the open-vm-tools-desktop package depends on... and since open-vm-tools suggests open-vm-tools-desktop, it probably got installed alongside Gnome as soon as its dependencies were satisfied.
You could have told the package manager to install just open-vm-tools-desktop (plus its dependencies of course) to get a truly minimal set of packages, instead of the whole gnome metapackage.
open-vm-tools-desktop contains the libdndcp.so plug-in to open-vm-tools, and that plug-in handles the host-guest copy/paste operations.
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Not so easy. I've installed open-vm-tools-desktop and clipit. I'm able to copy lines from i3 default terminal to primary buffer and see the content via clipit -p. But there is no communication with host buffer. Finally, gdk3 and gnome-session together are about 500Mb - the payment for Host-to-guest communicationpoul1x– poul1x2019-12-28 23:10:21 +00:00Commented Dec 28, 2019 at 23:10
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And you're right, I'm using debian 10 CLI packagepoul1x– poul1x2019-12-28 23:12:26 +00:00Commented Dec 28, 2019 at 23:12
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For Debian11, I had to install open-vm-tools-desktop and clipit plus its depencies too (another 100MB of packages).MKesper– MKesper2022-01-13 12:09:56 +00:00Commented Jan 13, 2022 at 12:09
Quite accidentally, I've bumped into this post. And after executing vmware-user-suid-wrapper host-guest copy&paste started to work! So, It looks like all is ok, but this feature is not turned on automatically. Really strange, isn't it?